We’re going to rip out their living goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks.”

Finally, he accepts his reputation for driving the men beyond what’s reasonable to expect.

He turns that on its head also, to show how it will save their lives:

“There will be some complaints that we’re pushing our people too hard. I don’t give a damn about such complaints. I believe that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood.The harder we push, the more Germans we kill.

The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pushing harder means fewer casualties.

I want you all to remember that.”

After that speech, Patton’s Third Army went through Europe like a whirlwind.

They destroyed nearly a thousand German tanks.

They killed over half a million enemy soldiers, and captured nearly a million more.

They built 2,500 bridges, captured 80,000 square miles of enemy held territory and liberated over a thousand cities and towns.

In an off-the-record interview, Patton explained to a journalist why he’d used the language he’d used.

“When I want my men to remember something important, to really make it stick, I give it to them dirty.

It may not sound nice to a bunch of little old ladies at a tea party, but it helps my soldiers remember it.

You can’t run an army without profanity, but it has to be eloquent profanity.

An army without profanity couldn’t fight its way out of a piss-soaked paper bag.”

What we can learn from Patton is in order to truly motivate people we need to talk to them in their own language.

ALSO worked because it’s General Patton
Too often these days, we get guys out of Sandhurst, West Point, art school making such speeches and it usually falls flat ‘cos the guy what’s making it has no cred
Not the rank but the experience, I reckon

I am reading now “Guns at Last Light” (it might have a different title in the UK). It’s Part 3 of Rick Atkinson’s “Liberation Trilogy.”
I think you’d like it. Particularly Gen’l Macauliffe’s response to the German surrender ultimatum at Bastogne: “Nuts.”

Hi Dave. I’ve just been looking through all the ad’s on your “videos” section.
Most of these came out when I was a kid – so it was a massive blast from the past.
The Holston Pills ones caught me a bit off guard though.
What was the thinking behind “the sugar turns to alcohol”?
Where did that strategy come from, and how was it relevant?
I can totally see why the style would have seemed really different at the time, and the executions are pretty cool.
I can’t for the life of me however figure out why telling people that Holston’s sugar turns to alcohol would sell any more product.

Ben,
Most beers don’t have anything other than image to differentiate them.
Holsten Pils had that fact.
David Abbott wrote that line in a time when you weren’t allowed to mention strength.
This had the joint benefit of repositioning other beers as full of sugar and at the same time alluding to strength.
So David cleverly got round the rules.
That’s why we kept that line when we got the account.

Great speech by Patton. But I also loved Tim Collins’ speech to his troops about to enter Iraq. No swearing, but eloquent, simple and moving. Great end line. ‘Our business now is north’.

I don’t think you mean, ‘Don’t use polite language’; rather, don’t use language that doesn’t communicate, that is sloppy, slipshod, all the things that Orwell warned against.

I have a postcard on my wall, written by the poet Basil Bunting (an amazing man, who had the most extraordinary life; check out his biography, ‘The Poet as Spy).

The card gives some of his suggestions for writing:

I suggest

Compose aloud.
Vary rhythm enough to stir the emotion you want, but not so as to lose impetus.
Use spoken words and syntax.
Fear adjectives; they bleed nouns. Hate the passive.
Jettison ornament gaily but keep shape.
Put your writing aside till you forget it, then:
Cut out every word you dare.
Do it again a week later, and again.
Never explain – your reader is as smart as you.

Hi Tom,
This is the part I like best:
“Put your writing aside till you forget it, then:
Cut out every word you dare.”
I forget who said it, but one of the truest things I ever heard was “Creating is editing”.